The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Jenny Dawson started her company Rubies in the Rubble with one stall of chutney made from surplus fruit in mismatched recycled jars. She was driven by a twin desire to make use of perfectly good fruit and veg that gets thrown away rather than sold and eaten, and to provide work for disadvantaged people who need it. Rubies in the Rubble chutneys and jams are made either from fruits and vegetables that are the wrong size or shape to fit with supermarkets’ notoriously stringent criteria, or from produce that is simply surplus due to oversupply – all of which would otherwise end up being dumped. Four years later, Rubies in the Rubble is stocked in outlets such as Waitrose, Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges and on the menu at Jamie’s Diner. Jenny Dawson is the 2014 winner of the Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award, which recognises the success and vision of up-and-coming young businesswomen. She tells us about her journey so far – and what she’s learned along the way.

Jenny Dawson, Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award winner

So: how did she take stuff that would otherwise be thrown away and make it into perfect products – and scoop the prestigious Veuve Clicquot New Generation award?

A good idea may not come from an obvious source

“I had the idea in 2010. I’d read an article on food waste and it intrigued me. I wanted to look into it a bit more, realising the scale of what was thrown away with nothing wrong with it, simply due to supply and demand. I was working in a hedge fund at the time, thinking about the economy quite a lot, and the more I read about the economic and environmental impact of food waste, the more I found it staggering: £22 billion was spent on food waste in 2009 and it accounts for 10 per cent of our greenhouse gases. So I set my alarm for 4am and cycled down to London’s New Covent Garden wholesale fruit and veg market in Battersea, which has about 700,000 tonnes of fruit and veg passing through it each year. It was fascinating: huge hangars, lights, forklift trucks and so much colourful fruit and veg. I loved it. But 100 metres away there was a tip of unsold fruit and veg. I particularly noticed a pallet of mange-tout beans from Kenya, beautifully wrapped, and when I opened them I couldn’t see anything wrong with them. I was brought up on a farm on the west coast of Scotland, and my mum is an avid gardener. If she grows too much rhubarb or strawberries or plums, she turns a glut into a preserve or a chutney. This was a giant glut and I thought ‘I’ll do exactly what my mother is doing and turn this into a product.’ At the same time, I’d been helping out with projects for disadvantaged individuals in London and the more I spent time with them I realised how awesome they were. And they needed work. I really believe work provides people with a feeling of self-worth and pride, and something to be part of – a team and friendship. So I wanted to champion the fruit and vegetables that were perfectly good but being thrown away, and the same with the people – that’s where the name Rubies in the Rubble came from. I wanted to bring them all back to shining!”

Starting small is fine

“While I was still working in the hedge fund, we borrowed a kitchen from Only Connect, a charity in London’s King’s Cross, and made masses of apple chutney. Initially, everything we had would otherwise had been thrown away. We had collected jam-jars and fabric off-cuts, each jar was sold by weight and we’d handwritten all the labels. We sold them at a stall in Marylebone High Street, in an absolute blizzard of horizontal snow, and we were sold out by 2pm – we loved it, even though we didn’t make much money. I handed in my notice at work in March 2011. We got a stall in Borough Market and started playing around with different recipes.”

You become powerful when you’re not scared of failing

“I felt like I had to learn everything quickly and at the beginning I was pretty naïve. But I almost think that helped because I wasn’t scared to jump in. I loved my idea, I was passionate about it and I was willing to spend a lot of time on it. And I had very little fear. I thought to myself that if it all failed, I would have learned a lot and tried hard. I was 25 when I started out and if the business hadn’t worked out, I would have gone and got another job – with some interesting experience on my cv. You become quite powerful when you’re not scared of failing. When we started, people said ‘Why don’t you be a charity? There’s no need to push yourself as a business’ but, having a hedge fund background, I felt that, although charities do amazing work, businesses should be addressing issues like unemployment and food waste in their business models. That’s the way things will change.”

You learn as you go along – and work through setbacks

“It all grew slowly. But our overheads were quite small: jam-jars, sugar, spices and so on. Once we’d proven the concept on a small scale, we started to sell into shops. It’s really hard to get onto the shelves: you have to convince the owners and to start with I was very naïve about that. I’d simply started out thinking about making the best product and I hadn’t thought at all about our selling point. For the first six months, we didn’t write anything on the jar about what we were doing or how we were making our products! One of the problems we had was timing. We couldn’t make our mango chutney feasible due to the wage cost of slicing, skinning, peeling, cutting round a stone – there was no way we could compete with someone using mango puree or ready-prepared mango, or do a big order quickly enough. We’ve had knockbacks where we’ve struggled to make things work financially, but we’re at the stage now where we’re looking to potentially get an investor, which is making us look forward to how we can make the business more financially attractive.”

Your business plan will develop…

“We’ve recently had a change with our business plan, outsourcing some of our production, and that will mean scaling up as a company. It’s because we’re concentrating on ‘waste’ food – if a farmer comes to us and says he has 15 tonnes of tomatoes coming through imminently, and can we take them, it’s a choice between investing in our own production or outsourcing. And we’ve got manufacturers saying that they have big units that aren’t being used to capacity and would love to manufacture for us. We’re also looking to link with a charity that works in food poverty. I’m excited about growing and developing in those directions. We’re also looking into a new range of products. Although we love chutneys – and a lot of people do! – they don't’ have a fast run rate. People might buy it once every couple of months. So we’re looking at developing a healthy range of air-dried crisps made with apple, pear, beetroot – it’s the same principle, no matter how wonky the fruit is, it makes delicious crisps.”

… and so will your reputation

“Forging partnerships was all about getting known, which can be quite a challenge for a small brand. Borough Market is a great place to meet people and everyone was really open, chatty and helpful. We had an amazing write-up in the Guardian and the head of sustainability at Waitrose read about us and got in touch. We had a meeting with the buyer, which was hilarious as we were so small – they asked if I was bringing my head of sales and I looked across the room at my intern that summer and said ‘Yes, the head of sales is coming!’ – she’s still head of sales two and a half years later. They tried our chutneys and loved them. Then we wrote to Fortnum & Mason. They loved the concept and said they’d like to visit our kitchen – and took a range quite early on, in 2012. It has been about word of mouth or us slowly approaching people – which we must do more of.”